We study the joint impact of gender and marital status on financial decisions. First, we test the hypothesis that marriage represents - in a portfolio framework - a sort of safe asset, and that this effect is stronger for women. Controlling for a number of observable characteristics, we show...

The aim of the present article is to examine the information content of the Italian term spread as for real economic growth rates and recession probabilities and to test its predictive power in forecasting regime probabilities. To this end the relationship between the term spread and economic...

The aim of the present paper is to provide evidence on the internal market efficiency of the Italian index option market. To this end a model-free approach is taken, whereby strategies involving only options are tested by means of a high frequency dataset covering the period 1 September – 31...

The birth and success of index option markets have fostered empirical research on their efficiency. While most of the literature focuses on North American markets, studies on European markets are still limited. The aim of the present paper is to provide further evidence on a European market, the...

Based on widely accepted evidence on the exceptional ageing of the Italian population, this paper aims to assess the impact of ageing on household portfolios in Italy and hence ultimately on financial markets. To this end, we use data taken by the Bank of Italy Survey of Household Income and...

We study the impact of gender and marital status on financial decisions using the 1989-2006 Bank of Italy Survey of Household Income and Wealth. Controlling for several characteristics of household financial heads, we find that male and married ones are more likely to invest in risky assets than...